


A Clean Bright Thing

by finx



Series: Finx Plays AU Bingo [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (I promise Clint's not actually an asshole), (Natasha just has too many trust issues not to immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion), (please read this with that in mind), Alternate Universe - Scarlet Pimpernel, F/M, between two married people who should just talk to each other already, complete with exaggerated miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 12:56:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17981747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finx/pseuds/finx
Summary: ~In Which~ Natalia Romanova finds that she can't quite put the Black Widow away entirely, even if she has sworn not to kill again for any cause.





	A Clean Bright Thing

Natalia knows, when she falls for a tourist who grins like sunrise in winter and agrees to follow him to America, that she’ll have to leave behind all the blood on her name and become someone new. Someone normal. Someone who cares about grocery shopping and Black Friday sales and whether the coffee place on the corner has walnut-banana muffins. Someone whose world is small, contained, and brightly lit, without a twisted labyrinth of memory and misery ready to suck in the unwary and drown them. Natalia knows what she’ll have to become and she welcomes it, revels in it, deliberates over what quirks and foibles to adopt with all the care and delight she imagines “Natasha” would feel picking out new curtains for the farmhouse that Clint’s promised to get them in America. They’re going to live in a small town. With neighbors, and a _general store._ Natalia is downright giddy with excitement.  
  
They get to America, they get to the farmhouse, they see the general store and meet the neighbors, and Natalia feels like she’s living in a movie. It’s magical, surreal, and every time she turns Clint is right there, warm and solid and more real than anything in the world. He’s kind and funny and sweet and soft, and he looks at her like she’s something delicate and precious, and she’s never seen anything more beautiful than his smile when he thinks she can’t see him watching her. She’s happy.  
  
Only the world doesn’t stop just because you decide to turn your back on it. The news reaches even their idyllic farmhouse, and in the end Natalia finds that there are only so many times she can pretend not to hear it. But there are promises she made herself, too, and she will not be a killer again, not for any cause.  
  
So she reaches out to contacts she never thought she’d need again, and the next time Clint leaves on one of his business trips, she gets herself down to the border and takes on a refugee detainment center with nothing but a distractingly blue scarf, a few forged ID cards, and a selection of her most devastating smiles. She gets ten people out, hands them off carefully to her contacts, and floats all the way home. She’s never used her skills for something so clean before, something so unquestionably _good,_ and she vibrates with excited joy for the rest of the four days it takes for Clint to finally get home from his trip. She’s never told him about her past, but now, she thinks, with this clean bright thing on her hands, now perhaps she can start to confess that she’s more than she seems.  
  
She can see from the way he pulls up the driveway that it was a bad trip – Clint musters a smile for her, but his mood doesn’t lift no matter what she does. Natasha insists he sit down in front of the television and makes him dinner, putters around their farmhouse kitchen with joy bubbling in her throat and butterflies roiling in her stomach as she tries to figure out how to tell him. Finally she gets the roast in the oven and goes to curl up next to him on the couch where he’s watching the news. His arm comes up around her almost instinctively, pulls her in close, and Natalia puts her head on his shoulder and feels something deep within her loosen, the way it always does when Clint is near.  
  
And then he says, “I wish they’d just give up already.” He nods at the television, where an announcer is talking about the latest anti-immigration bill being pushed through Congress. In the background, a clip plays of a family of five, wrapped in rags, staggering across desert sands. “It’s not like they’re ever going to get what they want,” Clint sneers, exhaustion blurring the anger in his tone. “Why don’t they just crawl back to the hole that spawned them and stop making themselves our problem?”  
  
Natalia goes very still. The joy that had bubbled inside her has turned to ashes, coating her tongue and clogging her throat. It’s painfully hard to breathe, for a moment.  
  
“Sorry,” Clint sighs, “I know you don’t like politics talk. I’ll shut up now, sorry.” He changes the channel, but Natasha barely heard him. She’s running through everything she knows about morality, everything she’s fought to learn and trust and believe in since breaking free of the Red Room, everything she thought Clint believed in, too. For the first time in months, her fingers twitch with the need for the cold weight of heavy artillery.  
  
Then her training kicks in and she snuggles in closer, making herself soft and pliant and desirable. She only just catches herself before she starts to press little kisses against Clint’s jaw, and draws back, disgusted. Clint isn’t a mark to seduce, he’s her _husband_. She pulls away and goes to check on the roast. For the rest of the night, she keeps her hands very carefully to herself.  
  
The next time Clint goes on a business trip, she calls her contacts again. This time, she rescues twenty.


End file.
